Container Bytes #43: The Oman Deal Collapses and the Resilient Transpacific Peak

Welcome to this week's edition of Container Bytes! I'm Judah Levine, Head of Research, hosting solo this week as Julia takes a well-deserved vacation. 📍

In this episode, we unpack why the anticipated Oman-Iran agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz has fallen apart. New demands from Iran—including reparations, transit fees, and vessel bans—have pushed hopes of an imminent resolution back, returning regional maritime transport to a strict wartime status quo. However, in a surprising counter-trend, ocean carriers including Hapag-Lloyd, Maersk, Cosco, and CMA CGM are reinstating select Red Sea transits despite localized Houthi threats against Saudi-linked trade.

We also break down the divergence across global ocean freight routes. While Asia-Europe spot rates have fallen about 15% ($1,000/FEU) from their early summer peaks due to easing demand, Transpacific rates have stubbornly rebounded. West Coast rates surged back to $7,400/FEU, and East Coast prices climbed to $9,400/FEU.

Finally, we analyze why the National Retail Federation (NRF) just revised its forecast: instead of an early end to peak season, US importers are sustaining strong demand through August and September thanks to resilient consumer spending and a smooth transition from Section 122 to Section 301 tariffs.

Chapters: 

• 00:00:00 — Solo Session: Judah hosting while Julia is on vacation. 
• 00:00:13 — Oman Deal Collapse: Iranian demands push back Hormuz reopening hopes. 
• 00:01:43 — The Red Sea Pivot: Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, and Cosco step back into the Red Sea. 
• 00:03:02 — Rate Floor Reality: Energy prices hold steady while spot rates diverge. 
• 00:03:36 — Asia-Europe Cool Down: Rates drop 15% amid blank sailings and Rhine River droughts. 
• 00:05:26 — The Transpacific Rebound: West Coast jumps back to $7,400 as demand holds. 
• 00:07:19 — NRF Revision: Why US peak season is lasting longer than expected. 
• 00:08:44 — Air Cargo Adjustment: Jet fuel surcharges push China-North America to $6/kg.

This podcast is a little experiment from Freightos—and may not be around forever—so if you dig quick bites of freight wisdom, let us know. 

For more detailed weekly freight updates delivered straight to your inbox, check out our weekly freight email. Want the freshest freight data on demand? Hit up terminal.freightos.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome to this week's edition of Container Bites from Fritos. I am Judah Lean, head of research. It's gonna be just me this week as Julia is out on vacation. So let's jump right in. If we start uh once again with what's going on in the Street of Hormuz, last week it seemed like we were getting pretty close to some sort of agreement. Iran and Oman had made announcements that they were getting close to an arrangement that would have Iran control entry into the strait and into the Persian Gulf and Oman control exits. It seems like this was kind of imminent, but since then it's basically fallen apart, maybe not from the Oman-Iran side, but because of additional uh demands that Iran is making of the U.S. Because basically this would be contingent on the U.S. removing their uh blockade. Iran has reportedly released a list of demands of the U.S. to have the strait open, which included a ban on U.S. and Israel-linked vessels, transit fees for vessels from certain countries, as well as reparations from the U.S. for damage caused during uh U.S. strikes during the course of this war. Um, and all that seems to have really pushed hoax back down that the strait is going to open soon. We're really kind of back to the wartime status quo, which is very few transits, U.S. a blockade, periodic uh attacks on vessels. Um, and that's kind of back where we are, although there are statements kind of every day indicating that a deal is imminent, but so far those haven't materialized. One interesting development alongside this is that we've seen additional steps from carriers to increase transits through the Red Sea. Now we know that the Houthis have been threatening transits through the southern part of the Red Sea, the Baba Mondeb Strait since the beginning of the war, but hadn't really attacked any vessels since then. Uh, but just in the last few weeks there has been an escalation, and this is really because of an escalation related to the Iran war, but more directly between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, which is a conflict that has extended for several years now. The Houthis have been, uh have attacked vessels linked to Saudi Arabia and said that they will attack the vessels that are making port calls in Saudi Arabia. Um, even so, even though there's kind of an escalation there, where you've seen these additional steps. As we've said before, CMACGM has been transiting through um when most other carriers had stayed away from the uh Red Sea and they're continuing to kind of restore or increase some of the sailings through the Red Sea. Now we have Hapag Lloyd and the MERS reinstating some of those sailings and also Kraska. So we have you know several steps by several carriers back towards the Red Sea, and this may be a beginning of a more general return, although again we've seen these stop and starts before related to what's going on with the with the conflict in Iran. So this is another kind of source of uncertainty, but maybe an encouraging step to see carriers willing to start going back, even though there's this you know conflict continues. What is all this meant for container rates? The answer is really not much. The street of Hormuz closure, the big impact is on the price of oil and therefore the price of fuel, and that's probably setting or impacting the floor for where container rates will go. But for now, as we've said, really since late May or at least the beginning of June, container rates have been driven by peak season trends, and that's where we still are. So, as we've said, there was an early start to peak season this year for various reasons related to straight of hormones and price increases that were coming there. And because peak seasons start early and rates increase very, very early already by early June, there is the anticipation that rates might start cooling early as well. The peak season might start um easing earlier than usual as well. And that seems to be the case for Asia Europe. Carriers now are increasing blank sailings for August, they're canceling or reducing uh planned mid-month rate increases in August as well, and spot rates are falling too. So prices have eased about $1,000 and about 15% for both Asia to North Europe and the Mediterranean since reaching the peak in early June. Last week's averages decreased 8% week on week. And now there are about $5,000 to North Europe and $6,000 to Mediterranean. Daily rates so far this week are also easing uh slightly, but at about that level. So these price levels are back to mid-June levels, but they're still about $2,000 per FEU, higher than they were before peak season demand started in mid-May. So the fact that rates aren't kind of cooling more significantly might point to a couple of things. One might be that you know demand is still elevated, but not at kind of the peak levels it was earlier in the summer, but also that congestion is really a factor now. So there's both congestion in some of the hubs in Europe that are dependent on the Rhine River for uh inland transportation, and that might be causing a backlog of containers at these ports because water levels for the Rhine are extremely low right now due to drought, and that's causing some backlogs there. And the other, and this is true uh across lanes, dependent on the Far East, has been just a series of typhoons, three really significant typhoons over the last month or so that have continued to batter some of the major hubs, including Shanghai in the Far East, and those causing serious congestion there, which absorbs capacity and puts upward pressure on rates. So that might be why rates are still quite elevated, even if they're coming down from those highs. On the Trans-Pacific, same thing in terms of early start to peak season, and there was an anticipation that we'd start to see an early cooling as well. But even though rates on Asia Europe and Trans-Pacific had kind of moved in tandem since late May, in recent weeks, those rates have diverged. So starting with the East Coast, East Coast rates hit a high of $9,000 per FEU in June when basically all these lanes had hit their peak season peaks. But rates have kind of stayed there since then. And just this week, they've started to trend up to about $9,400 per FEU. West Coast prices reached a peak in July, have fallen about $1,500 since then. It was a high of $7,600, had fallen back to about $6,000 per FEU. Um, and that seemed to indicate that demand was easing early start to peak season, early end. But rates have now climbed about $1,300 since the start of August, back to $7,400. So just $200 short of the earlier peak. Now it might be that actually that decrease in rates was a function of an increase in capacity as opposed to easing demand. So carriers, because rates were so high, it started injecting capacity, adding extra loaders to the lane to you know capture some of those elevator rates and service the demand there. And that might have caused that decrease in demand. Now we might be seeing capacity being adjusted a little bit and prices are going back up. But either way, it seems that that demand is still there. So even if demand peaked in July, it seems that demand is still significant on these lanes. Now, this has been surprising to a lot of observers, including including me. I've had that the early start would mean an early end. Um National Retail Federation had kind of projected that early in the summer that July was going to be the big peak and then a pretty sharp drop August and September. Now they've revised that to say that August and September are going to be still quite elevated and more of a sustained July, August, September peak, which is pretty normal, even if we had that early start. Why is this the case? Why have possibly things changed? It's possible a couple reasons. One might be the tariff deadline. So some of that early start might have been to get ahead of July 24th tariff deadline. Um, you know, a lot of shippers might have anticipated that tariffs were going to increase after Section 122 tariffs expired. And more or less they were replaced by Section 301 tariffs that were quite similar, both at about 10% for a lot of um uh imports from a lot of countries or 12.5%, which isn't a huge increase. So it's possible that because tariffs kind of didn't change that much, that some shippers who had anticipated stopping at this point are deciding, oh, well, we'll we'll continue uh though our orders because we're not seeing those big increases from tariffs. The other part might be some caution on the part of some shippers that were ordering but weren't kind of pulling forward earlier in the summer. But um, now that they you know kind of see that consumer spending is is holding up, that there continues to be this resilience, then you know, that consumers are continuing to spend, that might have increased their expectations for the big shopping events coming up, and that therefore they are increasing or continuing to order. And so those might be why we're seeing demand hold up for longer than a lot of people expected. Um, and air cargo, not the so much big changes here. We've seen rates increase a little bit in the last couple of weeks, possibly from increases or introductions of adjusted higher fuel emergency fuel surcharges from some carriers because of rising jet fuel prices, which have kind of leveled off but have increased significantly since uh the collapse of the uh US-Iran ceasefire since early July. And some of those surcharges are being introduced now, so that might represent some of those increases. China's North America, for example, um increased about 6% last week up to about $6 per kilo, and China Europe rates increased 2% to go above $4 per kilo, and that's what we have for this week. Thanks for listening and hope to see you next time.